


Eye for an eye for an eye

by belantana



Category: Life
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 14:03:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belantana/pseuds/belantana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How to measure time, in anniversaries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eye for an eye for an eye

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Heather](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heather/gifts).



> Many thanks to londonsophie for the beta, jaybee65 for the translation service, and of course my recipient for the interesting prompt. :)

**1\. paper**

It was a Sunday in July and much too hot for a party.

The wedding had been planned for May, but the King trial and the riots meant Charlie spent their wedding day on the streets. Jen spent it in front of the television, sick with worry and trying not to notice that she could smell the smoke from the house.

"This is what it will be like," her mother had warned over the phone, "the rest of your life married to a cop. Worrying."

Charlie came home in one piece. Jen reorganized the wedding. Now the party, every year, was going to be in July. She assured her mom that the heat was not going to stop a couple dozen thirsty cops sitting outside to drink to their health and happiness.

Everyone was due to arrive in a little under an hour. Jen was threading watermelon onto bamboo skewers, in an attempt to dilute the beer and steaks.

"Hey Jen, that looks like fruit on a stick."

She brushed her hair out of her eyes, forgetting the sugary pulp on her fingers. "It's good for you."

"The stick? That's lucky. I put some meat on a stick. Want some?"

He wriggled it at her ear and she batted him away, giggling, flushed. "No. It'll go straight to my thighs."

"What's wrong with your thighs? They feel all right to me."

She abandoned the watermelon in the sink. It was a Sunday, and Charlie wasn't working, and everyone would be arriving in an hour. (A couple dozen cops and only one of her mother, after all). The horizon was getting pink and hazy. Didn't she dream of this in tenth grade?

"How long has it been now? Two weeks? Three?"

"A year, Charlie," she said and she knew _he_ was the one who couldn't quite believe it.

\- -

**2\. cotton**

She bought tickets for Shakespeare at the Orpheum. Charlie raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"It'll be familiar," she assured him.

He brightened. "Is this the one where I kissed you on stage and Mr Peterson threw me out of drama group?"

"Only because it wasn't in the script."

"You slapping me wasn't in the script either. It was that dress. Damn. You were a fucking beautiful princess, Jen."

"Fairy Queen. I was the Fairy Queen."

"Uh-huh. Hey, do you still have that dress?"

She wore one the same color, but without the glitter and flowers. Charlie fell asleep before the intermission.

\- -

**3\. leather**

After the trial, after the sentencing, in the first month: he expected to die. Everything else in his life had been systematically ruined with such precision and force, surely there was only one thing left that could be taken. Accidental food poisoning, he thought, but then they would have to get around the fact that he wasn't holding down food too well at the moment. Hell, a knife between the ribs. No shortage of volunteers here with nothing left to lose.

He slowly realized that death by mysterious hand wasn't going to come. Was that worse? His thoughts were like plowing through sand. He couldn't be sure of anything any more.

Jen thought he was guilty – good. That protected her, he hoped. When he thought of the person who must be directing this wreck of his life, the idea baffled him. It made him forget which way was up. He was sick with claustrophobia, but when he got to go outside he cowered from the sun, the weight of it on his shoulders.

He was guilty, of course. Guilty of making someone, somewhere, so goddamn angry that lightning bolts had rained down around him, engulfing everything in flames.

\- -

**4\. linen**

In her dreams he comes to her, making excuses.

"I was angry."

"Tom tried to kill me."

"I thought he was sleeping with you."

With each excuse she is more horrified, more repulsed. She shakes her head, but she can't speak. He's holding her hand. They're sitting in the long grass behind the school bicycle sheds. The sun is warm on her back.

("And the children?" she gets out, sometimes, but he doesn't hear.)

"He was corrupt. He pulled a gun. It was dark. I couldn't see."

The end of the dream is always the same.

"I did it for you, Jen."

She wakes, and his voice is so real and her hand is always warm, where he held it.

\- -

**5\. wood**

It wasn't even a life sentence. It was three. A life for a life. What a crazy idea, he thought sometimes. He only had one life, no matter how long it might end up to be. It was like infinity plus infinity. It was like someone coming along and taking everything and then someone else coming along and taking everything. What else could you give them?

He brought this up with the guard. He got punched.

He brought it up with the guy who shot four people through his back fence because they wouldn't turn down their music. It appeared the courts had an amazing predictive ability to measure lives. Crews' three lives, give or take a few for concessions and details, made eighty-seven years in total, minimum.

He knew it was stupid, _stupid_ to dwell on it but he couldn't help it, his mind snapping back to that vast number like letting go of a rubber band, all the harder and faster for the further away he pulled.

Four thousand five hundred twenty-four weeks. Thirty-one thousand six hundred sixty-eight days. Forty-five million six hundred one thousand nine hundred twenty minutes. Eight decades, seven years. Four score and seven more.

Sometimes it made him feel a tiny bit better, flattened under the weight of all those years, with nothing, nothing he could do. Sometimes it made him feel so empty that it took his mind off how much his ribs ached, which was good. Sometimes just being able to think at all was a load of crap.

If he counted seconds, he didn't have to think about whose lives those three consecutive sentences really were.

\- -

**6\. iron**

"I want to go to college."

Mark was a little taken aback. He did the invisible frown trick, hiding it behind his hand like he was thinking hard; she noticed it because Charlie did it too. Mark was supportive, then encouraging. He didn't ask her if she'd been to college before. That would mean acknowledging a past they had mutually and wordlessly agreed did not exist.

("You were always smarter than him," her mom had said of Charlie. "Why are you giving up your life to marry a cop, sitting up late alone, worrying?")

What else did she want in life? Since tenth grade it had been nothing but Charlie. She was surprised and ashamed at how far back she had to dig before she remembered having other goals. College. A house. Kids. Yes, she had wanted two kids, a boy and a girl. She had never stopped wanting them, really. Charlie just eclipsed those things.

("I don't want college," she had replied, knowing it was the placid smile which annoyed her mom, but unable to help it. "I want Charlie.")

Charlie had just been a great big sun, casting a shadow over the rest of her life.

\- -

**7\. copper**

Sometimes Crews imagined he had a cellmate.

"What's that?"

"This? It's mail," Crews said.

"Mail?"

"Yes."

"Sure is a lot of mail."

"Yep, it's a big one." Crews weighed it in his palms. Big one.

"You sending a letter?"

"No. I was sent a letter."

"You gonna open it?"

"Maybe." He turned it over. Davidson and Associates, Family Law Attorneys. He'd read that already. He turned it back over. Charles Crews, Jr. His number. "Maybe not."

Pause.

"I'm surprised they let you have that."

"I," said Crews, "am also surprised."

"I mean, they don't usually let you have stuff in solitary. Not even mail. 'Case you fashion it into a weapon." His cellmate picked his teeth with a fingernail. His breath stank. His fingernails were broken anyway.

"What kind of weapon could I fashion from some mail?" He weighed it again, balancing it precisely on his fingertips. "Even a hefty bit of mail like this."

His cellmate chuckled, and Charlie opened his eyes, and looked at his fingers spread open where the letter had been, before they'd taken it away, unopened. "What kind of a weapon," he repeated, to himself.

\- -

**1\. paper**

They didn't have a reception. Because of the press, Jen said, and Mark was understanding; he was always understanding.

The county clerk spread the pages before them with slow, fat fingers. Sweat smudged the print on the corner. "Write your names here."

She didn't hesitate. Her life was a road before her, full of goals waiting to be met. She picked up the pen.

\- -

**8\. bronze**

Crews banged on the door with his uninjured fist. "Hey! I'd like some Shakespeare."

He got silence. He asked again. He got silence. He asked again. Eight days later he got a book.

"This isn't Shakespeare," he called.

"It's a fucking book," came the growled reply.

This was undeniably true. Crews examined it. It wasn't Shakespeare, but he couldn't remember why he'd wanted Shakespeare now, anyway. It was The Path To Zen.

\- -


End file.
